


What is RPF anyway?

by yourlibrarian



Series: Fanfic Genres [2]
Category: Fandom - Fandom, Supernatural
Genre: Gen, Meta, RPF, RPS - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-10
Updated: 2016-05-10
Packaged: 2018-06-07 12:29:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,619
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6804058
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yourlibrarian/pseuds/yourlibrarian
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>I think everyone agrees that RPF/RPS is a form of fanfic, though why this agreement exists seems less clear.  I would guess that it's because (1) It's usually written by fans, who are often writing other kinds of fanfic (2) It's non-commercial (in many respects) and (3) It follows various fanfic conventions that we see in FPF whether that's format, archiving, tropes, and so on.  So it kind of looks and quacks and waddles similarly even if many circles consider it an uglier form of duckling.</p><p>But is it really?</p>
            </blockquote>





	What is RPF anyway?

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted August 28, 2008

Someone on my flist posted about a newfound enjoyment of specific kinds of SPN RPS, and asked about other people's changing attitudes towards the genre. I was going to answer but figured this would get long so I decided to write a post instead. 

I think everyone agrees that RPF/RPS is a form of fanfic, though why this agreement exists seems less clear. I would guess that it's because (1) It's usually written by fans, who are often writing other kinds of fanfic (2) It's non-commercial (in many respects) and (3) It follows various fanfic conventions that we see in FPF whether that's format, archiving, tropes, and so on. So it kind of looks and quacks and waddles similarly even if many circles consider it an uglier form of duckling.

But is it really? Fans who write fanfic may write original fic as well, it doesn't turn everything they write into fanfic. If characters who are written about aren't celebrities but are real people, it's still RPF but certainly not fanfic. RPS may be distributed non-commercially, but it actually has more legal standing than FPF. After all, a lot of gossip and rumor gets spread about people all the time and is actually more damaging since many people suppose it to be true, not to mention fictional biographies and fiction with thinly disguised (or actual) people in it. And the average person would probably "get" an RPF story more easily than a fanfic one. 

But then there are also disagreements about what makes fanfic, fanfic. Some people distinguish fanfic from tie-in novels, for example, on the basis of the former being written for free by people who have a commitment to the source text and a lack of concern for publishing standards. So people distinguish Brust's unpublished (and now freely available) Firefly tie-in as simply an unpublished tie-in from something which, from the get-go, was intended as fanfic. I would agree with this distinction because I think _intention_ is an important factor. He may have written the novel because he was as serious a fan as any other. The fact that he finished it before being paid kind of attests to that in my opinion, even if I haven't read the novel yet. But he did write it with the plan to sell it, and thus make it accessible to not only a wide audience but, more importantly, to the people who would pay him to do so. This automatically limits the subject matter and approach considerably, whether a book is a tie-in _or_ an "original" concept. All you have to do is look around fandom and see how many conversations pop up about "having an idea about such-and-such but no one would read that" to see how many stories, even free ones, are stillborn due to a perceived lack of audience. 

While I'm not going to claim to have the ur-definition of fanfic here, for the purposes of this discussion I am going to claim that fanfic is distinguished as fanfic by at least three things: (1) Audience (2) Intention and (3) Knowledge of the source. 

I think the purest form of fanfic out there is the kind that has an audience of one. Occasionally that fanfic actually gets distributed to a lot of people, but more often I'd guess, it's what's called drawerfic. I think a lot of original fiction ends up this way as well, but to an original fiction writer that means the piece was anything from a writing exercise to a stalled idea to an artistic failure. The fanfic was often never meant to be read by anyone but the writer or perhaps a small group of friends, and the implicit meaning of much of its content reflects that. I should also add that I'm not speaking of it meeting a writing "standard" in terms of what makes it legible or formally correct. I'm just speaking of the content and approach. 

I think that to some degree, the reason fanfic is considered a lesser form of writing is because it's a failure by the standard of the average reader. Fiction writing is automatically expected to be broadly accessible by the average reader. The typical reader, I've noticed, often makes no distinction between something that is not written for _them_ and something that is inaccessible because it's badly done. They also typically have difficulty expressing why something works for them, but can expound at greater length about why they think something doesn't. Rarely are these reasons because there's something actually wrong with the text, but more often the reasons are expectations that have not been met. Fanfic automatically has audience-restriction built into it and there are a lot of expectations that will not be met by it. So when someone says "Wow, if you wanted to you could make a few changes and publish this," that tells me that the story is less a piece of fanfic and more a piece of original writing. That comment says to me (whether misguided or not) that the story is broadly accessible. 

Then there's intention. Obviously intention and audience tend to go hand-in-hand. You could know you have an audience and still intentionally not write anything they want to read (any teacher's had that experience), but usually people try to somehow satisfy an audience with their writing. You want them to laugh, or cry, or respond in some way. But you also have some intention for the life of your work. You may expect it to be read once and then discarded. You may expect it to be read repeatedly, or to be read by different groups (each of whom has their own demands). You may be hesitant to have anyone read it at all. You may expect it to fit into a larger body of work, created by other hands. You may expect it to fit into a body of your own work and say something about you as a writer. You may intend for it to have a very long shelf life. You may write it in reaction to something, and want to make a statement with the writing. But all these intentions and expectations shape the content and approach. If you're a professional writer you're generally shooting for a long shelf life, you want it to say something about you as a writer, and you'd better not be hesitant to have anyone else read it. If you're a fanfic writer you may be using it to make a statement, to fit into a larger body of work, and to produce an immediate emotional response.

Then there's knowledge of the source. I don't actually think that fanfic has to be written by someone very knowledgeable in the sense that their memory of canon is wide ranging and very specific. I've seen some very successful story writing done by writers whose knowledge of canon facts is skimpy (usually due to having seen/read very little of it) but whose understanding of the characters seems to be pretty intuitive. This to me usually reflects someone who is fannish because they've done a lot of thinking about the source and they are also capable of writing characters who are internally consistent. (In fact, I'd say many times fanfic characters are more consistent than the characters we see in canon). By contrast many pro tie-in novels I've seen may show both faulty knowledge of the source, and equally skimpy knowledge about the characters. This tends to dissatisfy everyone, because fanfic readers tend to enjoy little details that show knowledge of the source, and they enjoy deep characterization that shows a lot of thought about the character. In a novel of original fiction there may also not be a lot of consideration about character motivations because the characters are there to do what the writer wants them to do, so the characters are simply written to order. The original fic writer creates knowledge, they don't acquire or negotiate it. (They also may or may not do research about things that are objectively known, which can itself become a kind of canon). In fanfic, when writers try to turn the characters to their own purposes this often results in either new interpretational models of the characters (a fanon reading) and narrow reading circles, or something that just seems wildly OOC. The variety of overlapping fanfic out there not only demonstrates knowledge, but creates knowledge by building interpretative frameworks over the canon source. 

So, what does any of that have to do with RPF/RPS (for simplicity's sake I'm just going to call it all RPF)? Let me start by suggesting there are actually various strains of RPF and that they don't actually go together, even though they get lumped under the same umbrella. Although the first fanfic I read was Trek, soon after I was reading fanfic in music fandoms (I'm not going to use specific labels because I don't read in music fandoms now and am rather unclear about what they all mean). Music fandoms must be RPF because there are no fictional characters, right? Well, I would suggest that both the Beatles and the Monkees are good examples of how that gets confusing, since the latter especially spent considerable public time playing characters in a very fictional world. So you might have fiction that dealt with them _as_ characters, or fiction that dealt with them as actors/musicians living a life off camera. The problem is that those two things bleed over. So, for example, there are various ad-libs and other aspects of "real" self that come through in the fictional portrayal (just as there are when a band's on stage) and there are portrayals of real self (such as in interviews) that are actually well managed (or sometimes poorly managed) fiction. This is even true in FPF since interviews with writers have discussed how the longer a portrayal goes on, the more a character reflects the personality, tastes, and habits of the actor portraying him/her (or "actor bleed"). People write what they know. I'd even argue that the portrayal of a character can start getting strongly influenced by the writers' opinion(s) of the actors, sometimes to their detriment.

But I digress. My point was that there are 3 strains of RPF I've seen. As mentioned above one is of the people as characters, generally a character they have somehow created, with a canon that is "common knowledge." The second is of the person as an actual person, as a worker creating that fiction, of whom knowledge is very uncommon but for whom clues are available. And the third is of the person as prototype, as in " the original or model on which something is based or formed." 

I'd argue that none of these things is actually like the other although they tend to overlap in a very confusing fashion. I remember seeing all three of these forms when reading music fanfic. For example, the first I often saw in what I would call "prequels." They were of the band members as teenagers or somehow pre-band, but it was still fantasy fic, with the performers as characters set in their own lives but playing out a storyline of the writer's choosing. I also sometimes saw what we might call now the AU, which was of the band members as characters is some other settings such as a horror story or a time travel fic. Technically they were still musicians in the band, but their actual lives and work had almost nothing to do with the story –- it was used for characterization, not storytelling. And then there was the third, which I'd call "speculative fiction" which attempted to deduce an explanation for a canon event -– usually a pivotal one such as a band member leaving, a divorce or marriage, a trip to rehab, etc. 

I'd be willing to bet that no one reading this can point out an example of this third form of RPF in SPN. I'm not saying it's not out there. Since 98% of what I read come from recs it could be that it is and no one is reccing it. And I've seen some fic that does take some canon events as the basis of fic, such as a public appearance or a story that gets told. But those merely use canon as a prompt; the actors are still characters in a fantasy setting. I've yet to see anyone make a serious effort to write fic that actually speculates about who the actors are and what their lives are really like. Most of it rather, is what I saw someone call "set fic": fanfic that takes a real-life setting as a framework but doesn't even bother to get the facts right. 

And it's that third thing that makes me wonder the most at what people are doing. There are certainly FPF writers who don't pay much attention to canon details either, but unless they're also not delving into the heart of the characters, they're still writing from a fannish viewpoint. So returning to the three characteristics of fanfic, I'm asking myself, who is the audience for this RPF fic? What is the intention? And what is the knowledge being demonstrated?

I'm thinking that most of the _real_ RPF fanfic is drawerfic. It may be getting written but it's not being posted. Especially in SPN, I think that RPF is pretty popular because it's preferable to reading Wincest. I think a lot of its writers are fans of the show and want to write romantic stories but it's pretty hard to do that given both the setting of the show and the relationship of the characters. It's all designed to be very unromantic, even if the relationship is emotionally compelling. So the audience seems to be show fans who need only a minimal knowledge of the actors. The other reason I think there's a lot of it is because the actors have provided public characters that are eminently slashable. I mean, really, a lot of it just writes itself so you can slap a familiar framework on top of the characters and very little is needed in terms of motivational exploration to sell the concept. 

Having read a good bit of RPF early in my fanfic reading years, you wouldn't think I'd find it squicky, but within Whedonverse fandom I rather did. I tried reading some of it and did like the occasional story, but as a whole I avoided it. For me, the squick was that it was just so _off_. I could not see the people in question behaving anything like most of their depictions. The pairings just seemed random and forced, and I could understand why there seemed to be a general distaste for the genre. I hadn't planned to read any in SPN fandom either (if only because my plate was already so full). But it was actually fairly easy to read a lot of it since you had -- at least for the public view -- a pair of actors who not only got along, but did so swimmingly and with a lot of humor. Sure, I couldn't see many stories taking place the way they did, but I also didn't have a hard time believing that, were a few elements nudged to the left a bit, they could be emotionally true. That's also what I bring to most any FPS story, a suspension of disbelief that what I see on screen could be seen differently with a little tweaking. In essence you had a fandom where the actors had built and presented RPS characters, even if that hadn't been their intention. (And, from what little I've seen, we now have music fandoms where the musicians are _intentionally_ building those characters for use as a form of marketing.)

So the intent of the set fic seems to be mostly avoidance-related, directed at show fans who find the off-camera characters more appealing than the on-camera ones. I'd argue the intention of the AU stuff is farther afield. To read the AUs you really need no knowledge of the show or actors: in fact it may make things less confusing when off-camera and on-camera characters get mixed and matched (such as Samantha Ferris and Jo Harvelle appearing in the same fic). A lot of the characterization is pretty tenuous and pretty dissimilar from one fic to the next. I saw someone arguing that it's essentially original fic that uses the characters in order to find an audience. I think that's kind of true in the sense that the names could be changed to two other actors and marketed to a different fandom with no real difficulty. 

However most of it doesn't strike me as original so much as remarketed romance or erotica stories. This is clearest in cases like the harlequin or reel challenges, but in most of them I think there's a story somewhere that has been tinkered with to change the sex of the protagonists and various other facts to make the new names fit. In some stories I've seen, the idea seems to be something along the lines of using the actors as actors –- that is, that these stories are roles they're playing the same way they might take on a movie role, and that the stories are ways for us to imagine them in parts they might never get to play. Too often I think they're also parts they never would play, even given a healthy paycheck, and these are the fics that most often seem like fanfic. There's an inaccessibility to them that contrasts with the movie or romance rewrites that started out directed to a broad audience to start with. 

These RPF stories fail the third criteria, which is the issue of knowledge. As I said, with the AUs, no knowledge at all is needed to read them and hardly any to write them. They may be remixes of other stories, but that doesn't really make them fanfic because some of them are hardly changed at all. In fact, I remember reading two separate AUs that were so infintessimally changed from the originals that I experienced a sort of confusion akin to watching an old 3D movie without the glasses. There was no intent there, really, to do anything different with the stories other than to place these two characters there (which made for some odd dialogue). Of course those two stories weren't well written, but they did highlight a larger truth about the genre, which is that anyone could do it because it was more of a plot/prototype mashup than anything new. There was no POV being brought to it.

And to me that's where the knowledge of the source comes in. I agree with the idea that a lot of fanfic is meta in story form. The character sketches as well as the long stories all tend to have a particular take on the series and people in it. A good fanfic writer brings their knowledge of all these things to bear in presenting a certain "explanation" for who a character is, why they do things, what really happened. There's even a particular type of fic –- FitB or gap fic or whatever else it's called -– that tries to take those "fade to black" or scene change or off-camera moments and explain what else happened that we didn't see. But other fic too, takes certain assumptions about what a character would do, and tells a new story where they follow a certain path that's drawn from things they did before or which we know about them. And in the "speculative fic" that I used to see in RPF, that was the genre's equivalent –- knowing X, Y and Z, and interpreting A, B and C from that, here's what might have happened/may happen. But this type of fic is missing.

In a way the discussions about RPF (squicky or not-squicky) remind me of discussions of photo manips. Some people say that manips squick them, but this is kind of a nonsensical thing to say, because all sorts of wallpapers, banners and icons use some kind of manipulation and adjustments that move together, layer, or otherwise change the original images. Official promos do it too (and sometimes not as well as fan artists). What those statements mean, I think, is that the _execution_ of people's heads stuck on other bodies, and sometimes in uncomfortable settings, weirds them out. It's a bad fit, and it makes one uncomfortable to look at it. I think that they have this same reaction to RPF. When the layering is badly done and seems completely improbable there's a negative reaction to it. 

At the same time, I suspect that this kind of fic would actually be the easiest kind for the celebrity in question to read (should they happen across it) because it really says nothing about them at all. And it can be very entertaining for its silly factor (though I just have to interrupt myself to say that John Barrowman's quote about thinking it's a blast that people write all sorts of sex fantasies starring him –- being improbably virile no doubt -– is likely hilariously true of a lot of people.) Speculative fic, on the other hand, could be very disconcerting exactly because it's not "out there" and in some cases could be rather close to the mark. And I suspect that this is exactly why it's not seen, because nowadays it is rather easy for people to go online and bump into that whereas before you had to be looking for it. 

So is RPF actually fanfic? I'd say some is, yeah, but chances are you're not reading it.


End file.
